Thursday, December 29, 2011

If there is one thing I have to eat when I come back to Indonesia, it'll be CRAB. Crab in spicy sauce, crab with salted eggs, or smoked crab. Whichever it is, I want it.
This time around, I went to try a new(ish) seafood place called Rasane, which is famous for their smoked crab (kepiting asap). Rasane in Indonesian means "the flavor" or "the taste".

As with most seafood places in Indonesia, they serve live seafood kept in tanks. Customers would go up to the tanks and pick out which crab, fish, lobster, etc they want to eat that night. Or you can just tell them how much you want and have them pick it out for you.

The "smoked crab" at Rasane is first fried in a sauce made with garlic, red onion, ginger, and tomato. Then, they're smoked in a banana leaf (with the sauce, of course).

The plain, boiled crab legs in the US cannot satisfy me. My favorite part is always the main body of the crab, which has soaked up the sauces the most. It's all about the sweet crab meat and the bold sauce! We got two big crab to split among three people, but we could've used more.

Grilled live prawns. Can't go wrong with live seafood.

A large bottle of Bir Bintang (Indonesia's most famous pilsner), to share with my dad.

Another thing about dining in Indonesia is that these days, it's all about the discounts and credit cards. Many restaurants have a joint promotion with a certain credit card company or bank. If you pay for your meal using that credit card, you can get discounts up to 50% off. At Rasane, using BCA card you can get 50% off all food items! Of course, the restaurant has to cover their cost by marking up other items. With the discount, the price for the crab was actually pretty cheap - though the live prawns were still expensive. Next time, I'm going for just crab!